[shokkyy]

Next in the queue for my dehydrator is garlic. I wanted to use the weensy bulbs or the ones with a bit of damage to dry out and make chopped garlic. And in fact I wouldn't mind making quite a bit of it because it's just a useful backup if some of my whole bulbs don't keep as well as I'd hoped.

In the Mary Bell book it does say to cut the garlic into slices before drying, but has anybody every tried drying whole cloves? Bear in mind I'm talking about the small cloves, not big ones. But if I do quite a bit and I have to cut it all into slices, it's going to be a very long and tedious job, and I'm going to really smell bad afterwards.

Anybody tried this?

[Trillium]

The reason for slices is so that everything is a uniform thickness which results in one drying time rather than some bits dried beyond hope while others are still damp.

If the cloves are that small, then slice them in half lengthwise and give that a try. As for stinking afterward, if I have to stink, then you can stink too    Seriously, this is a good time to use thin vinyl/latex gloves for that task.

If you want to make chopped garlic, then I find it better to chop it prior to drying because it's quite crisp when dry and will simply shatter to powder if you try to cut/chop it later.  Set it on the solid fruit leather sheets rather than the slotted racks so it doesn't fall to the bottom of the dryer later.  I have several nieces who suffer with celiac and they tell me they can't have store bought garlic powder because flour is added to it, so they make their own and say the flavour is superior because it's just garlic, nothing else.
 

[shokkyy]

Actually, whenever I've bought chopped garlic it's been more powder than chopped. But there's no way I'm going to chop all those by hand, before or after drying. It'll be bad enough having to peel all those little cloves. If I chop before drying it's going to have to be the mini chopper, but I do find that tends to blitz them a bit. If I chop after drying I'll just put them in a pestle and mortar and that should be easier to control. I'll try cutting them in half and see how that works.

The worst part about this time of year is I always seem to spend every spare minute chopping, blanching, bagging, freezing, drying. I've got quite a few small onions this year too. Decent crop, just that the bulbs aren't quite as big as last year and I've got more very small ones that hardly grew at all. Now I've finally found a really good onion chopping gadget so I can chop more than one without having red eyes all night I want to chop them up and either dry or freeze them so they don't get wasted.

[New shoot]

Last year I stored my small cloves by heating olive oil and pouring it over cloves in a small clean jar.  I kept the jar in the fridge and fished them out as I needed them.  The oil sort of sets in the fridge but once the garlic is gone, it is really infused with the garlic flavour and is also good for cooking   

I used Val's method here

http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=79682.msg895152#msg895152

Saves a lot of chopping and slicing    The stored cloves are pretty soft as they come out and can be thrown whole into dishes as they pretty much dissolve in the pan or can be crushed with a fork